Cheney wants revenge, unloads on Bush

Former Vice President Dick Cheney believes his old boss, President George W. Bush, gradually turned away from his advice during their second term in the White House, showing a surprising independence as he started taking more flexible positions on a range of issues, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Cheney, often described as the most influential vice president in U.S. history, has been discussing his years in office in informal talks with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues, the Post said, as he works on a memoir due out in 2011 from Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions.

Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney’s book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, said the article published on the Post Web site, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that "the statute of limitations has expired" on many of his secrets.

The book will cover Cheney’s long career from chief of staff under President Gerald Ford to vice president under Bush.

"When the president made decisions that I didn’t agree with, I still supported him and didn’t go out and undercut him," Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. "Now we’re talking about after we’ve left office. I have strong feelings about what happened. … And I don’t have any reason not to forthrightly express those views."

According to the author of the Post piece, Barton Gellman, who earlier wrote a book on Cheney called "Angler," the former vice president believes Bush made concessions to public sentiment, something Cheney views as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end, Gellman says.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," Gellman quoted a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming."

The Post quoted John P. Hannah, Cheney’s second-term national security adviser, as saying Cheney remains driven, now as before, by the possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons from a nation hostile to the U.S.

What is new, Hannah said, is Cheney’s readiness to acknowledge "doubts about the main channels of American policy during the last few years," a period encompassing most of Bush’s second term.

Dick Cheney–tight-lipped, awkward, self-absorbed, amoral–caused more harm and uncertainty in eight years than any other public official in the history of the United States. With his ill-gotten PHD and un-willingness to serve in the military during a time when 70% of us did, he was already off the mark before he was was thirty years old. Why citizens did not turn a deaf ear to this man who is inherently unwilling to listen to others–his own opinions and advise, to him, almost godly–is beyond the radar of any thinking person in this country.

‘Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets.’

That pretty much sums it up right there, except instead of “secrets”, read “crimes”. (Secrets don’t HAVE a statute of limitations!) Cheney’s biggest disagreement with Bush? Bush’s decision not to pardon Scooter Libby for outing Plame. The reason he wanted that so much, is that Libby took the bullet for Cheney on that, and he is afraid that Libby could decide to suddenly “remember” all those conversations and meetings where Cheney ordered him to commit such crimes.

Not to worry, Dick: Scooter will keep his mouth shut as long as he gets a nice cushy “Conservative Think Tank” job in the high 6 figures. He wasn’t really going to practice law anyway.

What offends me more then Herr Cheney is the Spineless Jellyfish D-Crappers of the likes of Nancy Fancy Pants ‘No More Blank Checks For Bush’ Pelosi who every step of the way shied away from holding the Shrubya Administration accountable with her continual enabling of the Shrub/Vader cabal.

Hairy Reed of course enabled the Shrub/Vader Cabal by blowing sugar AT&T’S way by giving it retro-active immunity.

When we talk about real traitors in addition to Darth Cheney, then Fancy Pants Nancy Pelosi & Hairy Reed fit the description of traitors to a ‘T’.

The headline says Cheney wants revenge, but I saw nothing in the article equal to that claim. Why, then, make such a claim?

However, I agree with another poster that any mention of statute of limitations means that prosecutable actions were knowingly taken and won’t be admitted to until he cannot be jailed for them. As far as I’m concerned, anyone knowingly taking actions as a leader of this country (or as a leader of a state, city or county) that are contrary to law should not be held to any limitations. They took oaths of office that they violated willingly and should be held accountable regardless of how long it takes to learn about their treasonous and/or illegal acts!

I still don’t believe him. This is nothing more than an attempt to create buzz before the book’s release, and pump up sales. All the ‘psst, I’ve got news about Cheney’s memoirs’ won’t get me to read it.